Home made weed killer

[brightspark]

i worked for a crop sprayer he did it all his life and only gave up at the age of 80 was loosing the plot a bit so had to give up driving just in case he was well fit and had no breathing dificultys . having said that my breathings fine at 70 .worked in sh.itty attics and dusty jobs without a mask smoked 60 a day for years sprayed half a dozen cars using 2 k with a poxy mask and i had a beard so half me mush was the colour of the paint.sandblasted and shotblasted obviously with a proper airfed helmet and still do and fit as a fiddle i know people that have done none of it and have resperatory problems cancer and died at 50 must be pot luck

 

[Guzrik]

i worked for a crop sprayer he did it all his life and only gave up at the age of 80 was loosing the plot a bit so had to give up driving just in case he was well fit and had no breathing dificultys . having said that my breathings fine at 70 .worked in sh.itty attics and dusty jobs without a mask smoked 60 a day for years sprayed half a dozen cars using 2 k with a poxy mask and i had a beard so half me mush was the colour of the paint.sandblasted and shotblasted obviously with a proper airfed helmet and still do and fit as a fiddle i know people that have done none of it and have resperatory problems cancer and died at 50 must be pot luck

Happy to read you are healthy and use ppe, and I also have elderly family who have done al those things and are still going strong at 87.
Problem is that I also lost a SIL at 50 to asbestoscancer and the aforementioned FIL&MIL what changed my perspective on suspect substances we all used.
As long as there are other ways I will not use the easy poisons anymore, it is not worth it.

 

[Mick Annick]

Manual extraction then fire.

Never removed anything from site - burnt every fibre.

Injected Glyphosate - then sprayed Glyphosate - but you gotta be patient and wait for some green and time it for when in late summer it takes it down to root rhizome.

Dow Tordon 22k was no better than Glyphosate to be honest - for the job - it just cost's lots more...

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I would again buy a cheap premises infected with Knotweed - it not that hard to iradicate... It just takes time.

The problem with knotweed is - water cources and neighbours - if you adjacent to land with knotweed on it - and the owner does nothing - you will never win the battle.

Knotweed is rampant around here, no one seems bothered by it

 

[brightspark]

Knotweed is rampant around here, no one seems bothered by it

it stops a lot of house sales round here and mortgages if theres a sniff of it

 

[Onoff]

Speaking a while back to a place about getting a shell soda blasted. The guy said the process is quite expensive compared to in the US where you can get a blasting truck come to you. Out there I'm sure he said they can sell the soda residue to the railway companies where it gets scattered track side to keep weeds down.

Then, a chap at work swore that he cut the end off a neighbour's invasive ivy and popped it into a bottle of the phosphoric acid we had there. Would have been 25 or 50%. Reckons the plant took it up and it killed the lot.

?

 

[Smallfry]

my bruv inlaw once worked for the railways and gave me some white powder killer they sprayed along the tracks with he used it on a public footpath edge along his house. tother side of the footpath about 8 meters away from a row of conifers about 60 foot tall 2 month later a guy was taking a sample from the ground and checking the trees he asked whats the score , tree specialist said 12 of them were dying brother inlaw never let on he had done it and fortunately for him he moved house a month after never found out what it was but it was good

Sodium Chlorate ? Done for my ex neighbours huge conifer within a month .

 

[premmington]

I'm not sure Paraquat (or more commonly sold as Gramoxone in the UK) would have much impact on trees via their roots, as IIRC it mostly relies on leaf contact.
It was highly effective at killing growth, as it could turn fields brown within days, so was ideal for clearing growth before cultivation, whereas Glyphosate was slower acting and had to be applied a couple weeks before cultivation for the same effect as it had to make it's way to the roots before killing the plant.

Gramoxone was highly toxic though.
I've heard of farmers poisoned just from not washing their hands correctly after using it, and also a local sprayer driver walked into a tomato greenhouse to ask the owner a question after using it, and all the tomato plants shrivelled along the sides of the path he'd walked along just from the fumes still on his suit.

I wouldn't be surprised if my dad still has some in the chemical cupboard though, as I dread to think what chemicals are still lingering in there from growing soft fruit for over 40 years

@m_c

I was grasping for the word "Gramoxone" when I made the earlier post and used the term Paraquat.

Maybe by memory starting to fail...

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But to be honest - I trying to use less glyphosate weedkiller - and in lower concentrations. Pick my days - watching the weather forecast. Waiting till my victim weeds have enough growth/foliage to suck the glyphosate into them in one hit - instead of multiple applications.

Also I been experimenting with Acetic acid for a few years with good results as a contact weedkiller.

 

[bricol]

Trike was banned in the late 70s I believe. We had open "Trike tanks" when I worked at Plessey.

We were still replacing trike tanks in the 90's with aqueous cleaning machines - I think it might not have been actually banned well into this century.

Used to use it in aerosols to clean model car racing motors in the 80's . . hold the motor in our bare hands as kids and spray . . . never mind the fumes . . .

 

[premmington]

it stops a lot of house sales round here and mortgages if theres a sniff of it

Surveyors have 3m and 7m rules in relation to invasive plants like Japanese Knowtweed, Bamboo and Buddleia.

I think you can come to a deal with a lender - if you get a "treatment plan". I really don't know the rules - but I would think it would increase interest rate - indemnity insurance? Add a lot of cost - even before you opened the bottle of weedkiller...

I am led to believe on a bigger scale - very big sites with plant and diggers - they just bury the Knotweed Rhizomes deeper? As Knotweed is considered controlled waste and there are laws about disposal.

 

[premmington]

We were still replacing trike tanks in the 90's with aqueous cleaning machines - I think it might not have been actually banned well into this century.

Used to use it in aerosols to clean model car racing motors in the 80's . . hold the motor in our bare hands as kids and spray . . . never mind the fumes . . .

I think trichloroethylene was banned in the food and pharmaceutical industries in the 70's - but I am sure for some industrial applications - the final ban was not till 2015 ish?

 

[m_c]

Although not directly related to this use, I did listen to this podcast about using AI to reduce chemical usage a while ago - https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/po...with-john-deeres-revolutionary-ai-technology/

At the moment, it's only cost effective for large farms, and I'd doubt with the figures discussed in the podcast it would make much sense for many UK farms/crops, but the technology is only going to get better.

 

[premmington]

Although not directly related to this use, I did listen to this podcast about using AI to reduce chemical usage a while ago - https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/po...with-john-deeres-revolutionary-ai-technology/

At the moment, it's only cost effective for large farms, and I'd doubt with the figures discussed in the podcast it would make much sense for many UK farms/crops, but the technology is only going to get better.

@m_c That is clever (interested me) cost saving as well...

I can never find interesting podcasts - I always loose interest - get "bogged down" in the front page search bit of looking for something interesting to listen too.

 

[dobbslc]

We were still replacing trike tanks in the 90's with aqueous cleaning machines - I think it might not have been actually banned well into this century.

Used to use it in aerosols to clean model car racing motors in the 80's . . hold the motor in our bare hands as kids and spray . . . never mind the fumes . . .

The cold white fingers

 

[Robotstar5]

Trike was banned in the late 70s I believe. We had open "Trike tanks" when I worked at Plessey.

We had an open trike tank in the middle of the workshop at the foundry in the 70's, we would wash our hands in it if heavily soiled

 

[brightspark]

We had an open trike tank in the middle of the workshop at the foundry in the 70's, we would wash our hands in it if heavily soiled

i washed some parts in a bucket of neat tfr with no gloves the next day all my skin started peeling worse than bad sunburn. it was falling off in lumps for a week i dont think il be doing that again

 

[Smallfry]

When I did my short stint in a factory back in the late seventies, there were heated trike tanks, that had mist in them. Components were dangled into the mist in baskets, to clean them. The tanks did a lot of "homework" with engine and gearbox components.

Process operators wore no masks, but usually gloves and a rubber apron.

 

[Seadog]

We had an open trike tank in the middle of the workshop at the foundry in the 70's, we would wash our hands in it if heavily soiled

Likewise, we used bare hands to clean PCBs and metal samples.
The tank had a bath and a vapour area for rinsing off.

 

[Blobber]

When I did my short stint in a factory back in the late seventies, there were heated trike tanks, that had mist in them. Components were dangled into the mist in baskets, to clean them. The tanks did a lot of "homework" with engine and gearbox components.

Process operators wore no masks, but usually gloves and a rubber apron.

They had that at an electroplaters i worked in, think the tank had a cooling loop running around it so the mist only came up so far, a few of the guys used to smoke over it!
Gave them a "high" apparently

 

[m_c]

@m_c That is clever (interested me) cost saving as well...

I can never find interesting podcasts - I always loose interest - get "bogged down" in the front page search bit of looking for something interesting to listen too.

I listen to the Moore's Lobby podcasts because they appeal to my geeky side.

Another one I found quite interesting, is the one about Formula-E - https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/po...mark-preston-formula-e-motorsports-ev-design/
(at least I think that's the correct one!).
They discuss how they could essentially drive the car with a computer, and nobody would be able to beat it, as the computer could analyse every part of the track, know exactly how the car will handle on it, and run it at it's absolute limit.

They also discuss how current motorsport could potentially become less mainstream, just like horseracing, as people move away from driving cars themselves, and lose that connection to something you do yourself.

 

[Erie Fred]

Although not directly related to this use, I did listen to this podcast about using AI to reduce chemical usage a while ago - https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/po...with-john-deeres-revolutionary-ai-technology/

At the moment, it's only cost effective for large farms, and I'd doubt with the figures discussed in the podcast it would make much sense for many UK farms/crops, but the technology is only going to get better.

When I was visiting Chile 2017, the one T.V. channel was devoted to farming.

They showed using a drone to fly a pattern back & forth across a field to map it using
a camera ( IIRC infrared as well), tech at desk downloads the view, program circles area's on the field
with less or stunted growth, develops file.

At the field, sprayer operator downloads or USB drive into sprayer, hooked to GPS.
Drives around field, spray nozzles each going on/off like a printer.

applying different amounts where needed.